The Thing (art project)
The Thing is an international, non-commercial artist network.
idea
One of the basic ideas of The Thing is an artist-initiated and operated speaking and writing about art and culture. Originating from the spirit of “Institutional Critique”, THE THING was part of an art that had begun in the 1980s to address its own production conditions, its mediation and reception. To realize this concept of art it is necessary to develop your own information and communication infrastructures. There is also a claim to create a further form of publicity in addition to information from the mainstream and traditional art criticism. From: The Thing Hamburg
history
The first node of the network was founded in 1991 as BBS for the New York art scene by Wolfgang Staehle . The Thing is therefore the oldest platform of its kind. Based on the idea behind Joseph Beuys' Social Sculpture, artists and cultural workers used generally available network technology for the first time to enter into dialogue with one another. The Thing expanded as a mailbox network in Germany from 1992 to 1994. There were hubs in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt am Main. In other European countries there were branches in Basel, Vienna, London and Stockholm for a short time. With the advent of the World Wide Web , the mailboxes gradually disappeared. From 1995 to 1997 the following stations of The Thing went online: New York, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, Amsterdam and Basel. Thing Hamburg joined in November 2006. In 2015, the operator of the Berlin node Ulf Schleth put a server of the free social network Diaspora into operation to draw attention to the regressive and proprietary working methods of commercial social networks.
The thing global
- The Thing Amsterdam was founded by Walter van der Cruijsen
- The Thing Basel was founded by Barbara Strebel and Rik Gelles
- The Thing Berlin was founded by Ulf Schleth
- The Thing Cologne was founded by Michael Krome
- The Thing Dusseldorf was designed by Jörg Sasse founded
- The Thing Frankfurt was founded by Andreas Kallfelz
- The Thing Hamburg (1993–94) was founded by Hans-Joachim Lenger
- The Thing Hamburg (2006–2009) was founded by the local art society "THE THING HAMBURG"
- The Thing London was founded by Andreas Ruethi
- The Thing New York was by Wolfgang Staehle founded
- The Thing Stockholm was founded by Magnus Borg
- The Thing Vienna was founded by Helmut Mark and Max Kossatz
- The Thing Roma was founded by Marco Deseriis and Giuseppe Marano
literature
- Inke Arns : Net cultures . Europäische Verlagsanstalt, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-434-46107-8 , p. 52.
- Josephine Bosma: Constructing Media Spaces. In: Media Art Net 2. Springer Verlag, Vienna 2005.
- Dieter Daniels, Gunther Reisinger (eds.): Net Pioneers 1.0: Contextualizing Early Net-Based Art. Sternberg 2010.
- Christiane Paul: Digital Art. Thames & Hudson, London, p. 111.
- Edward A. Shanken: Art and Electronic Media. Phaidon, Londin 2009, ISBN 978-0-7148-4782-5 , p. 50.
- Verena Kuni: Waste for everyone? In: Stolz, Gisi, Loop (Hrsg.): Literature and literary studies on the way to new media - a position determination. Germanistik.ch, publisher for literary and cultural studies, Zurich 2007.
- Mark Tribe, Reena Jana: New Media Art. Taschen Verlag, Cologne, pp. 22-23.
- The Thing fights to stay online. In: International Herald Tribune . December 28, 2002 (English).
- Verena Dauerer: A good reputation is not good enough. In: The daily newspaper . May 31, 2001 ( https://www.taz.de/!1169975/ Online).